Little Black Dress (Peter Macklin Novels)

by Loren D. Estleman

  “I asked him about that. He said he doesn’t read books.”

  “He’s read his share of menus.”

  “I’ve seen fatter.”

  Prine unhooked his mike and checked around. Everyone, city and state, was in place.

  McCormick said, “If there’s a hit-and-run downtown, they’ll have to call the Cub Scouts. You sure Grinnell’s in there? He went to his bank this morning. He could be in Florida.”

  “Macklin’s in there. That’s his car.” He looked from it to his lieutenant. “Where’s your vest?”

  “Where’s yours?”

  “I never got around to having a new one made after I outgrew the last one. I can’t get my size off the rack.”

  “You don’t wear one, I don’t wear one.” McCormick scratched his head, dislodging some cut hairs. Every time his wife gave him a haircut, Prine had to have the car vacuumed out. It was like driving around with a sheepdog. “You sure we shouldn’t hit’em on the way in? That’s a lot of hostages.”

  “First sign of riot gear and they drive right on past. We’ll just have to do this all over again. Anyway, there won’t be so many when they show up. They don’t go in until just before closing.”

  “It’s their first bookstore. Maybe they changed that part too.”

  “You don’t rob a place until there’s cash in the registers.”

  McCormick hesitated. “I forgot about that.”

  Prine snapped his Desert Eagle out of its underarm clip and racked a shell into the chamber, breaking one of his own regulations. He hadn’t been in the field in years and wasn’t sure of his reflexes under fire. “That’s why I hired you, Mac. You don’t think like a criminal.”

  “I love you.” The speaker’s voice throbbed.

  “Don’t say that.” Same voice, roughened a little.

  “Why not? It’s true.” Throb.

  “That’s even worse. Whenever you fall in love, with whoever you fall in love with, the ending can’t be happy. Someone winds up alone.” Rough.

  “Someone winds up alone either way.”

  “What is this shit?” Mark Twain demanded from the backseat.

  Wild Bill half turned in the front passenger’s seat and tossed the box into Mark’s lap. Serpent in Eden landed with the pictures of the author and movie-star reader on top. “I told Donny to boost a van with a tape deck. You ever listen to books on tape?”

  “I didn’t even read the one with me in it. Find a rap station.”

  “I thought everybody liked Matt Damon.”

  “Who the fuck’s he?”

  Wild Bill turned off the tape deck. “My little redhead says Spain moved a thousand copies in Buffalo last week. I guess there’s something we ain’t hearing.”

  “I fucked a redhead once,” Mark said. “Never again. You get their clothes off, they look like a skinned squirrel. I never felt so black.”

  “All we had was coffee and doughnuts. She sure liked to talk, even when her mouth was full. I had one Marjorie every place we hit, we wouldn’t’ve needed Grinnell.”

  “Now you’re starting to sound like Carlos.”

  “Poor Carlos. I don’t miss him.”

  “Why’d you shoot him?” Donny asked.

  “Why not shoot Carlos?” Mark said. “He was born to be shot.”

  “I mean before the bookstore. It’s a big job for just two inside.”

  “Mark and me’ll just work harder by half.”

  “What about that rap station?” Mark asked.

  “I want to get barked at by some colored guys, I’ll drive up to Detroit, put a ding in a Lincoln Continental. You tell me you listen to that shit at home, put your sock feet up on a Barcalounger and turn on Old Dirty Bastard, you’re a liar. That’s just for cruising the suburbs, piss off the soccer moms driving their giant SUVs.”

  “You got to be in a mood for it.”

  “Anything sounds good on parrot pills. DPW guys busting up a sidewalk.”

  “You ever try listening to Toby Keith without a six-pack of Bud? It’s all the same world, man.”

  “Lay off Toby. He put the western back in country and western. The women just about made off with it before he came along.”

  “Fucking sellout. You never saw Tupac banging no guitar with Ford plastered all over it.”

  “Maybe they never asked him. He took two in the belly before they got around to it.” Wild Bill was having fun. It was always like this before they hit a place, all of them wired up tight as a bale of hay. It was better without Carlos and his Baby Ruths and his bullshit Mafia stories. Having to stop every ten blocks to use the toilet.

  Donny said, “There’s Olive Garden. Pasta’s quick energy.”

  “A little Dago Red go good about now,” Mark said. “I’m out of pills.”

  “One glass,” Wild Bill said, “you go right to sleep.”

  “I’ll spit out half.”

  Donny wheeled the big Econoline into the restaurant parking lot. All the spaces were taken. People were sitting and leaning on the railing outside the building.

  Wild Bill said, “Keep driving. I wanted to stand in line to eat I’d join the army.”

  Mark said, “Mexican’s good. Raise a margarita to old Carlos.”

  “Good idea. That way if a cash register’s locked, you can blow it open with a fart.” Wild Bill leaned forward and switched the sound system back on. Matt Damon put the throb in his voice.

  “Why is it so hard for you to admit you care about anyone besides yourself?”

  “Who said I care for myself?”

  “Oh, shit,” Mark said. “Find a pet store.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  In her four years on the labor market—in the course of which she had drawn paychecks from seventeen different employers—Marjorie Chesswick had never worked so hard in one day, at a job so monotonous.

  She had come close during the three weeks she’d spent in the back room of a community shopper in Chillicothe, folding and stuffing advertising supplements into five thousand copies of The Ross County Consumer (the publishers claimed a circulation of twenty-five thousand, on the theory that each one was read by an average of five people), and it had been filthy work besides, smearing her hands and face and clothes with several shades of smelly ink, but at least there she’d been one of three employees working side by side, and the time had passed quickly in conversation and laughter. On this job, she was dealing directly with customers, unable to visit with the other slaves without appearing rude, and she couldn’t encourage discourse with the people across the counter without slowing up the line. Pamela was adamant about not keeping patrons waiting.

  Marjorie thought she would’ve enjoyed the cocktail party that preceded the signing—getting to meet the guest of honor, drinking champagne and discussing books with the president of the village council and the branch manager of the bank—but Pamela had invited only Caroline, her senior cashier, for that, from among the staff. The rest had been told to show up thirty minutes before the doors opened, to clear away the glasses and crumbs and napkins and unlock the registers. By then most of the VIPs had left, and Spain was busy inscribing books purchased earlier by longtime customers who couldn’t attend the signing. Once when he raised his head, Marjorie had smiled at him, but he’d looked right past her to ask Pamela for a pitcher of water and a glass, instead of the plastic squirt bottle she’d provided. Apparently big-time authors flew too high above the ground to drink distilled water or take notice of the help.

  When she’d applied for the job, she’d imagined working in a bookstore was a genteel experience, sitting on a stool behind the counter reading, sipping tea brewed from the contents of the elegant foil-wrapped packages displayed in the giftware section and marking her place with a finger while she completed the odd transaction; talking about T. S. Eliot and Maya Angelou with her fellow workers after closing. She had a BA in English Literature and until she had enough put by to go for her MA and a teaching certificate, it would have been the closest she came to using he
r education since commencement.

  She’d spent her first day climbing up and down a stepladder in the back room, stacking remainders and countless heavy cartons on shelves, and getting paper cuts from the lacerated jackets of Hurt Books as she applied red discount stickers to them. It was sweaty and achy, and nearly as filthy as stuffing newspapers. Even new books shed sooty dust and bits of Styrofoam packing material that clung stubbornly to her fingers when she tried to flick them off. Her fellow workers didn’t know Maya Angelou from Miss Piggy, and even the customers left the foil-wrapped bricks of tea on the shelves. In eight months on the job she hadn’t sold one.

  But stripping was the most disheartening work of all. No one who admired books and loved reading could spend an afternoon ripping the covers off unsold paperbacks to return to the publishers and dumping their nude carcasses into a big plastic trash can. That was the closest thing to the one ghastly day she’d worked for the humane society, watching cages of puppies and kittens being carried out to the gasworks behind the kennels.

  She’d made up her mind to quit right after the Francis Spain signing. She’d have given notice sooner, but she wanted to meet her first real live author, and she couldn’t leave Pamela and the others shorthanded so close to the big event. In fact, she’d just come to that decision when a Kentucky cowboy had approached the counter with a smile and conversation that said she was more than a machine hooked up to a cash register, and later an invitation to sit down over coffee and Krispy Kremes and share the details of their lives. He’d been a fishing guide in Montana, had hunted all over the West, and had come back home to claim an inheritance and figure out what to do with the rest of his life. So they were in the same situation, not counting the inheritance.

  She liked his long clean hair, his moustache like corn silk, his Southern accent with its frontier overlay, and his kind eyes, which looked brown or green depending on the light—hazel, she thought it was called. He wasn’t much older than she, certainly not thirty, but his face was weathered from exposure and there was a kind of sadness about him that supported his determination to change directions. His friends called him Wild Bill, he’d said, but he wasn’t feeling so wild these days. She’d told him some things as well, mostly about the bookstore and how it operated, things about Pamela. He’d said he was thinking of going into the book business, opening a store of his own. She’d told him it was no work for anyone who liked books. He’d said that was no problem, he preferred movies, especially westerns. She didn’t think she’d ever seen a western, but on his recommendation she’d stopped at a video store on her way back to work and rented Tombstone. Val Kilmer had reminded her a little of Bill, beautiful and sad.

  It was the best part of the last eight months; but it was only an hour, one lunch break out of 160. He hadn’t said anything about asking her out again. Probably he was repelled by her red hair and freckles. Men liked them at first sight, but they got old fast. She wished her grandmother had come from Sweden instead of County Limerick. So that was that. She didn’t even know his last name.

  This today was just plain soul-destroying. She kept looking at the same damn book with the same damn cover, seasoned occasionally with an impulse item—Love Song in paperback, mostly, or a decorative bookmark—but not very often. You got tired of looking at it, scanning the code, skidding the book across the magnetized counter to deactivate the antitheft device, and stuffing it in the bag with the receipt, over and over. “Thank you. I can help the next person in line.” It was like working in a factory and a long way from the literary experience she’d expected.

  “Smile. You got forty years till retirement.”

  She looked up from the current copy of Serpent in Eden to the face of the customer who had put it in front of her. Bill was smiling at her from under the lank moustache. He wore a jean jacket buttoned to the neck.

  Her cheeks cracked. She realized she was smiling back. Grinning. “Hello! I didn’t think you were coming back.”

  “I said I was. I almost didn’t when I saw the line. Then I remembered there was someone I wanted to buy the book for.”

  He pried it out of her professional grip, opened it to the title page, and spun it around on the counter. It was signed: To Marjorie. Best, Francis Spain.

  “You didn’t go ahead and buy it?” He sounded anxious.

  “No. I wanted to. I have an employee discount, but I owe rent and I don’t get paid till next week. Are you sure you want to give it to me? It’s an expensive book.”

  “I wouldn’t’ve stood in line for an hour if I didn’t. I listened to some of it on tape. It’s all right, I guess. I think I told you I don’t read much.”

  “You’re just not reading the right kind of books for you.” She glanced over toward Spain and saw Pamela watching her. “I’ll put this in a bag and give it to you. You can give it to me later, if you still want.”

  “When’s closing?”

  The line had dwindled to a few dozen people, mostly middle-aged women. “Fifteen minutes by the clock, but I doubt we’ll turn anyone away. It’ll take about an hour to finish up.” She took his cash, gave him change and the bag with the book in it. She smiled. “Thank you. No man’s ever given me a book.”

  His smile was sad. “See you in an hour.”

  McCormick looked at his watch, a Seiko. “They ought to be closing up about now.”

  “There are still people waiting,” Prine said.

  “They’ll go in before the doors are locked. Blasting your way in spoils the surprise.”

  Prine watched a leggy cowboy type in a jean jacket stride across the parking lot, carrying a store bag. He kept on walking and disappeared around the corner of the health club. Not a few of the patrons had come in on foot. There were several new subdivisions within walking distance. “I’ll pull in the unmarkeds. I don’t want this crew circling the block, counting SWAT teams.” He unhooked the mike.

  When he signed off, McCormick said, “No sign of Macklin. Maybe he went out the back.”

  “He’s still inside.”

  “You see him?”

  “No, but I can see Grinnell. Neither one of these bums is going to walk out and leave the other with the candy.”

  It got quiet in the car.

  “You think it was Macklin cooled the guy in the music shop?” McCormick asked.

  “I hope so. The state’s not big enough for two like him.”

  “Means he’s got a gun.”

  “We’ve got more.”

  Macklin asked Laurie what she thought of Spain. They were standing by the magazine rack, out of the writer’s earshot. Spain never looked up from the books he was signing to see who he was signing them for.

  “I’m not disappointed.” She sounded tense.

  He looked across at Grinnell, who was pretending interest in the computer books. The man remained in full view of the windows and the security guard.

  “What’s going to happen?” Laurie asked.

  “Your mother’s going to make Employee of the Month.”

  Her face was unreadable. “You promised me no more secrets.”

  “I don’t know any more than you do.”

  “You’re armed. So is Benjamin.”

  That surprised him—not that Grinnell was carrying, but that she knew it. He nodded. “I’m armed because he is.”

  “You couldn’t have known that when you were getting ready to come here.”

  “I guessed it.”

  “What did he tell you that night that you aren’t telling me?”

  “Not a thing. That’s the truth.”

  “I want all the truth. Not just some of it.”

  “So do I. He’s got something in mind, and I think it’s for tonight. But I don’t know what it is.”

  “Does it have to do with Spain?”

  “I don’t know what it would be if it does.”

  “Why don’t I go up and ask him?”

  “No.”

  “I said why don’t I?”

  He said nothing.
>
  “You son of a bitch.” She turned Grinnell’s way, dress rustling.

  Macklin’s hand shot out and closed on her wrist. She spun back in his direction, face twisted. He put his face close to hers and dropped his voice almost to a whisper.

  “Because if you go near him, it’ll be like he’s got two guns pointed at me.”

  The tension went out of her after a moment. He let go of her wrist. The imprint of his fingers showed on the skin, but she didn’t rub it. “You’re still a son of a bitch,” she said. “And if you’re alive after tonight, I want a divorce.”

  Mark Twain drew the book out of the bag and turned it toward the streetlight. They were parked at a meter three blocks from the bookstore. The village didn’t collect from meters after six o’clock.

  “Jesus. You want to fuck this guy or what? You keep buying the same book.”

  “It’s a gift.” Wild Bill slung an arm across the back of the front seat and snatched back the book. Mark had grabbed it from him as he was getting in. “They’ll be tied up another hour. We’re not waiting that long.”

  “You was gone a hour. We thought you was busted.”

  “I didn’t,” Donny said.

  “It ain’t you’d be doing this job solo if he was, so shut the fuck up.”

  Wild Bill felt sad. Mark was starting to get unreliable without the pills. It was the first break in their little family; Carlos had been an outsider, forced on them by Toledo. Tonight was definitely the end. “Security’s a big guy in a blue blazer, no eyebrows. Standing fifteen feet in from the door, to the left. Didn’t budge all the time I was there.”

  “What about Grinnell?”

  “He’s in there, Macklin too. Same plan as before.”

  “What plan?” Donny asked.

  “You just drive,” Mark said. “Let us worry about what’s inside.”

  Wild Bill said, “There’s some heavy weight inside. There’ll be shooting.”